No Bullshit Fanzine
This is an annual magazine edited
by a Pamplona Expert and Party Animal with contibutions from Pamplona Addicts from all over the world. It provides a rough
guide to the Fiesta and in particular it focuses on the mystical art of Running
With The Bulls. The Fanzine itself is available by mail order at $20 an issue.
You can contact the editor direct by email nobullshit@pamplona.powernet.co.uk
(The following is
an article by the editor published in the No Bullshit Fanzine 2000)
Running With The Bulls
Running with the bulls is
not dangerous….. It is very very very dangerous! Oh yes there are loads of guys
who just climb into the street and have a go… ‘No problems… bit of a breeze
really’. You will have run into these guys all over the world. They made it to Pamplona once, seen it all, done it all, got the T-shirt;
‘just get in the street son and have a go.’ That’s probably the advice Matthew
Tassio got before he arrived in Pamplona back in ’95, hours later he was dead. He was the
first foreigner killed in the Bull Run, and
his was the 13th death in the run since records began. His was a classic case
of running in the wrong place at the wrong time and doing the wrong thing when
he fell over. So just forget these mentally challenged jokers who say ‘what you
don’t know can’t hurt you’. Anybody who intends running should find out a few
of the basics first. In the last two editions of this Fanzine I have written an
in depth guide to running with the bulls, so I won’t bore the regular readers
(all three of them) by repeating myself. The are still a lot of copies of last
years Fanzine available by mail order in the Estafeta, so anybody new to the
game, can always grab a past issue. I will just mention a few brief suggestions
and hopefully correct some of the misinformation that is going around. I
apologise to those readers who think I am ‘stating the bleeding-obvious’ but
you have got to remember there are some right bampots out there and the next one
might be running alongside you one morning! Days and Dates There are eight runs
each year; the first is on the morning of the 7th July and the last on the 14th
July. The run starts at eight o’clock in the morning; forget all this rubbish about ‘the
seventh hour of the seventh day in the seventh month’. Originally the run began
at 6.00 am but in 1924 it was changed to 7.00am and in 1974 it was brought
forward to 8.00 am, probably with the intention of cutting down on the number
of drunks who were still standing in the early hours contemplating ‘having a
go’. Personally speaking I am a firm believer in getting a least a few hours
shut-eye if you are running in the morning. Although many of my fellow party
animals view the run as being the big-boys equivalent of ‘a bed-time story and
a cup of horlicks’ and will only crash out after running and swapping some
bullshit stories at Bar Txoco. However these people are not very good role
models, they are degenerate, alcoholic and deviant; and that is just their good
points, but they have been running with the bulls for years. My honest advice
for a first-timer is to get at least four or five hours sleep get up about 6.00
am and make sure you are in the street in front of the town hall by about 7
o’clock. Then spend as much of the next hour chatting to people and listening
to what they say. However this should be the time for last minute reminders,
you should have already walked the course the day before with an experienced
runner and spent a good amount of time listening to sound advice. Where to Run
I am always asked every year ‘Where is a safe place to run?’ I generally reply
‘Calle San Nicholas’ Why is that so safe they ask? ‘It is because the bloody
bulls go nowhere near that street!’ I reply in my normal three-days-into-serious-drinking
Pamplona intolerance tone. ‘If you want to do something safe,
then bog off and play Ludo..’ I continue. It is at this point that they
normally wander off muttering about the Scots being living proof that the Irish
slept with buffaloes. So what happened to the charm of my youth? I remember the
times I would bore the pants off anybody who wanted to talk about the run. The
answer is.. fear! I used to believe it was all so easy, it didn’t matter where
you got into the run; I was omnipotent, they were not going to touch me. Now I
am forty-one, fucking frightened but not yet impotent! I have seen a lot of
people get seriously hurt in the run. When I was 18, unmarried and no kids, I
didn’t have a care. I was there every morning, in the street, right up amongst
the bulls. Now I am old and slow, I now have to rely on my wits, if I am going
to get into the street. So if you are one of the unfortunates that encounters a
foul-mouthed micky-taking reply to a civil question, you can now understand where
it is coming from. Fear! Seriously, if you want to find out about the places to
run, talk to people and watch the run. But don’t ask me two minutes before the
off, firstly I will be ‘a bit on edge’ and secondly I will probably be more
abusive that normal (and that is pretty bloody abusive). The time to talk is
over a cool beer after the run. You will always find guys that like to talk
about it in Bar Txoco in the main square. Just tell them you are from Time
Magazine and they will bore the arse off you with bull-running stories, and
how-to-run hints.
